Guild Wars 2

I read an article on MassivelyOP that suggested that video game voice actors were going on strike next month because I guess apparently $200 an hour is way to cheap to be a living wage let alone live a comfortable life. What gets me is why do these guys that give wooden lifeless performances half the time think they’re even worth $200 an hour even?

Ultimately though this is going to lead to content droughts a cross the whole video game industry, as well as crappy truncated content for the year in all games.

Don’t believe me, remember the writers strike from ten or so years ago that gave us LOST season 4, Heroes Season 2?

http://massivelyop.com/2016/10/17/video-game-voice-actors-to-strike-on-october-21st/ here’s the source (which OP forgot, shame on you)
>First of it says ‘likely’ without a decent source why they think it’s likely.
>Most strikes are often one/two-day events to push the shock on a company what it would look like.
>I doubt the voice actors will unify in this, since the lower groups are scared a strike can result in losing a job due to the quote “for you ten others”

In the end, I’ll believe it when I see it.

I think that by now the voice work for epsiode 3 is already done so it would sooner affect episode 4 (if it affects anything).

The VA for GW2 is for the most part pretty solid (although I replayed Claw Island again the other day… shudders), so hopefully the industry can work things out and avoid too much delay.

If not… well, never a better excuse to re-release LS1 content for those that missed it.

If you follow the link in the article to the actual call for a strike http://www.sagaftra.org/sag-aftra-interactive-strike-date-set-friday you will see that neither ArenaNet nor NCSoft are listed as video employer targets for the strike. LS should roll merrily along on schedule.

dont forget that when anet released these short vids with the voice actors back at (or right before) hot’s release the voice actors mentioned casting for the living world too while they were casting for the expansion

They voted for the strike a year ago with a 96+% yes vote. Since talks haven’t produced an agreed upon outcome, strike is all they have left.

This is what they are looking for.

http://www.sagaftra.org/interactive/what-we-stand-for

A lot of which is already afforded to voice actors who do animation.

Oldirtbeard.9834:

Don’t believe me, remember the writers strike from ten or so years ago that gave us LOST season 4, Heroes Season 2?

A writers’ strike is not comparable to a voice actors’ strike. The writers’ strike meant there was no material for the actors to perform, but those who were not in the guild could release material. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report went on brief hiatuses because of the strike, but went back on the air before the strike was over because the stars started doing their own news research. The talent was willing, but they had nothing to do.

If the voice actors go on strike, it is possible that game staff could be substituted to voice the characters. This can be a completely horrible idea, but it can be done. Now, I’m not interested in doing the research myself, but are the VAs who want to go on strike the ones who ONLY do video games, or does it include ones with various VA credits to their name? Who goes on strike could also affect it, as strikes tend to be based off a centralized union.

Read the stories again: they are only striking particular companies; ANet is not one of the companies.

http://www.nu.nl/games/4339401/stemacteurs-starten-staking-bij-game-uitgevers.html
Update:
The strike is ongoing, but only companies like Activision, EA, Disney and Warner Bros are affected because they make the most money, but pay the least. The strike is limited to these companies because these companies are the demons in this case. there is no value in striking in the small companies or other companies where wages are fine.

I read somewhere else that blizzard voice actors are paid pretty well (relatively)

Amaimon.7823:

http://www.nu.nl/games/4339401/stemacteurs-starten-staking-bij-game-uitgevers.html
Update:
The strike is ongoing, but only companies like Activision, EA, Disney and Warner Bros are affected because they make the most money, but pay the least. The strike is limited to these companies because these companies are the demons in this case. there is no value in striking in the small companies or other companies where wages are fine.

I read somewhere else that blizzard voice actors are paid pretty well (relatively)

Arthas’ voice actor dropped it in WOW because the payment was low.

Amaimon.7823:

I read somewhere else that blizzard voice actors are paid pretty well (relatively)

Slowpokeking.8720:

Arthas’ voice actor dropped it in WOW because the payment was low.

The fact that the VA Arthas dropped WoW due to pay tells us very little about whether WoW actors are paid well or not. Blizzard might pay much better than average for its roles, but worse than what a particular actor might think they deserve.

As other people have said it looks like it’s only specific companies which are affected, which makes sense since it’s unlikely every single developer has the same policy on recruitment and pay.

Also some of the issues involved aren’t likely to affect Anet. For example one of the complaints is companies refuse to tell actors (or rather their agents) what game/s they’re being hired to work on. When your company only has 1 game that’s pretty difficult to do.

Similarly they’re upset that they get paid a flat (relatively low) fee regardless of how much money a game goes on to make. And I don’t know how you’d work that out for the Living Story which is given away free to anyone who logs in during it’s release period (probably the majority of people who play it).

Of course it’s not for me to say what a reasonable business practice is in an industry I’m not involved with. But it seems unlikely it would affect Anet.

Rognik.2579:

Oldirtbeard.9834:

Don’t believe me, remember the writers strike from ten or so years ago that gave us LOST season 4, Heroes Season 2?

A writers’ strike is not comparable to a voice actors’ strike. The writers’ strike meant there was no material for the actors to perform, but those who were not in the guild could release material. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report went on brief hiatuses because of the strike, but went back on the air before the strike was over because the stars started doing their own news research. The talent was willing, but they had nothing to do.

If the voice actors go on strike, it is possible that game staff could be substituted to voice the characters. This can be a completely horrible idea, but it can be done. Now, I’m not interested in doing the research myself, but are the VAs who want to go on strike the ones who ONLY do video games, or does it include ones with various VA credits to their name? Who goes on strike could also affect it, as strikes tend to be based off a centralized union.

I’m not sure about everyone involved but at least some of them do both. For example Tara Strong is one of the actors involved. She’s probably best known for voicing Harley Quinn in the Batman cartoons and has done tons of other cartoons too, but she’s also done voices for games. Notably (in our case) including Scarlet Briar.

You’re right that the staff could do the voices but I think these days that would be a last resort. I still play a number of games from the early days of voice acting when that was standard practice, especially for smaller companies and…lets just say voice acting is a skill in it’s own right and not everyone possesses it. It was ok for games where voice acting comprised a handful of lines but for bigger, story driven games you really need someone who can sound convincing and not like they are reading lines from a page, out of order, in a small windowless room with no atmosphere.

Dear Arena Net,

Last friday the actors guild went on strike against many big studios in the game industry. Details “here”: http://www.sagaftra.org/sag-aftra-strike-against-video-game-employers.

Is our beloved game, and the awesome voice over we have, going to be affected by such strike? If it does, what is Arena Net’s position in this situation and what is it doing to make things better?

Thank you!
See you in Tyria.

I think this thread is already discussing it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lwd/Episode-3-Delay-Incoming/first#post6376491

According to posts in the aforementioned thread, the answer would be no.

Good luck.

Hey, thank you guys. My post got merged in here.

I would still like an official message from the team about the issue, since people can go on strike to help out the cause even though they are not directly affected by it.

It is also a great opportunity to learn a little bit more about the process of voicing over that goes into our game.

Well, we are currently in the Hallowe’en event right now, and most projections are that the next chapter will be out next month. At the same time, ArenaNet has been flexible on nearly all of their internal deadlines, so it could be longer than that for reasons unrelated to the VAs at all. For now, I’m going to optimistically say that all the lines for the season were recorded long ago.

If there is going to be a delay for unforeseen outside circumstances, there will definitely be a blog post about it, explaining it in details. For now, just have faith that ANet knows how to do a Living World update by now.

Another reason the next Living Story chapter is unlikely to be affected is apparently this isn’t a strike in the conventional sense – the actors involved are still going to complete current contracts, they’re just not going to take on any new ones.

(I think voice acting in games is one of those jobs where even if you have a reoccurring role you’re contracted for one project – one game or expansion or DLC or whatever at a time and then get a new contract for the next one, unlike ‘regular’ 9-5 jobs where you may be on the same contract for years or even indefinitely, so this will take effect fairly quickly but no one’s at risk of being in breach of contract.)

Even if they haven’t gotten all the dialogue recorded yet I’m sure they will have secured voice actors (especially for the reoccurring characters).

Hopefully they will use the extra time to search out and fix bugs.

How will we know if Episode 3 is delayed (without the Devs expressly stating so), anyway?

There is no announced release date; only a “We will try to release Living World Episodes every 2 to 3 months”, which might not be a tentative schedule they keep during the holidays.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

How will we know if Episode 3 is delayed (without the Devs expressly stating so), anyway?

There is no announced release date; only a “We will try to release Living World Episodes every 2 to 3 months”, which might not be a tentative schedule they keep during the holidays.

From what I’ve seen the rule for video games in general is that it’s delayed when someone decides they want to play it and it’s not out yet.

But more seriously you’re right. All we know about Episode 3’s release date is that it seems logical it would be sometime in November.

And that’s purely based on the fact that they said they’re aiming for 2-3 months, Episode 2 came out in September, October is taken up with Halloween and December with Wintersday. So January seems too far away and they’ve got a convenient ‘window’ next month.

But they haven’t actually said that would happen.